Monday December 3 11:21 AM ET Factional Fighting Erupts in North Afghanistan By Michael Steen
KABUL (Reuters) - Factional fighting has prompted the United Nations to pull its international staff out of the city of Mazar-i- Sharif, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday, in the latest sign of worsening security in northern Afghanistan.
``We have observations of sporadic fighting and shooting in the city, we don't have any information on who is fighting whom,'' U.N. spokesman Khaled Mansour told a news conference. ''We have heard about factional fighting.''
Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum captured Mazar-i- Sharif from Taliban troops on November 9, the first in a series of Northern Alliance victories which led to a rout of the Taliban from most of the country.
The apparent outbreak of fighting between various Northern Alliance factions in Mazar-i-Sharif was the latest sign that long- held tensions within the grouping of warlords were beginning to show.
``The area around the city is very unstable,'' Mansour said, adding that around three million civilians were dependent on aid provided by foreign agencies in the north of Afghanistan.
``We don't have anyone in Mazar, our security officer left the city, I think yesterday,'' he said.
Another U.N. official in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several concerns had prompted the pull-out.
``There was a combination of looting, security threats to Western nationals and factional fighting. Several factions want control of the city,'' the official said.
He said a similar situation existed in the eastern city of Jalalabad, on the road from the capital Kabul to Pakistan. The U.N. has no expatriate staff in Jalalabad.
Four journalists, two from Reuters, were killed on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad on November 19 when armed men stopped their car and shot them. Four other journalists have been killed in two incidents in northern Afghanistan.
BORDER TENSION, REPRISALS
Mansour also said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was concerned about reports of rising tension among the population on Pakistan's northwestern border with Afghanistan.
The UNHCR is concerned about possible reprisals against ethnic Tajik and Uzbek refugees living in the mainly Pashtun area, following the killing of Taliban and foreign al Qaeda fighters during a prison revolt near Mazar-i-Sharif last week.
The Taliban drew its support from the Pashtun, Afghanistan's traditionally dominant ethnic group.
An advance party of 40 French soldiers arrived at Mazar-i-Sharif airport, six km (four miles) from the city, via Uzbekistan on Sunday to start operations to secure it for humanitarian aid deliveries.
Herve Fouilland, a force spokesman, said by telephone the soldiers had begun work with U.S. sappers to clear mines and unexploded ordnance, and Afghans were also repairing the runway.
He said C-130 Hercules transport planes should be able to land at the airport within a few days. U.S., Jordanian and additional French forces would then be able to move in to keep the airport secure for aid flights, Fouilland said.
He said he had no information on the situation in the city.
_______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold